Buying music online, will you?

I agree, Lady In Tears. What I liked about the gift card was this situation:
I went to That CD Shop and heard the Cafe Del Mar Classic I and II CDs. I liked the entire Classic I CD, so I bought the CD there. But on Classic II, I only liked one track (Pachelbel), so I didn't want to buy the whole CD.
When I got home, I got onto iTunes and bought just the Pachelbel track that I liked.

So I see digital sales as a good companion to CD sales, without replacing CD sales. If not for iTunes, Cafe Del Mar would have made zero sales on Classic II; with iTunes, at least they sold one track.
 
yes, digital downloads would only supplement cd sales without fully replacing them. the main issue now is that youth download illegally now because they do not have access to the payment options. i know, cos i used to be like that.
also, digital downloads dont give you the complete packaging. i like to keep the album and all the goodies included haha
 
as far as possible i'll buy the actual CDs itself. the feeling of opening up the package and flipping through the booklet, looking at the album art is really unreplaceable.

i mean, if you have the soft copy of a limited edition box set (e.g. Behemoth's Demonica, which is apparently limited to 10,000 copies worldwide), or own the actual thing, i believe owning the actual thing feels much better.

just my 2c worth.
 
i'm more of a CD guy. i'd order the CD from amazon if i can't find it here...

owning a CD feels different. it's like that music is YOURS...and you can keep it for years.
 
^ So true, once your HD is gone all your music is gone too. CDs stay there forever although it does deteriorate in quality over the years, it's still listenable. I prefer CDs over downloads, though I do rip the music into my computer for convenience sake...I still keep my CDs. :D
 
I would only spend money on non-lossy music, and even better if it is in an open format (FLAC / Monkey's Audio), not apple/wma lossless. If stores only sell lossy, id rather download it pirated.
 
I guess I am the odd one out. I been buying music online from Amazon Music Store for a year and a half, and never looked back since.

Plus points:
1. I get the album as soon as it is released, on the day itself.
2. I usually have 2 copies of the song, one on the hdd and one on my mp3 player. And every few months i do a backup to my external hdd so that's a 3rd copy. So no need to worry about computer going down.
3. No DRM, 256kbps mp3s and you can purchase bonus tracks from limited edition CD as well.
4. No need to store my CDs. I have over 200 CDs now, and it's a pain.
5. Way cheaper especially for indie and metal(core) CDs. Most ex is 9.99 USD, they have regular offers where you can get an album for like 3.99-5 .

The only time I buy CDs is when there's a really compelling reason, like for Mastodon's new album they had a limited edition which included some very cool artwork, so I ordered it from their website.

But downside is that the Amazon MP3 store is only for US citizens, so to buy tracks you need an American Express credit card , a US address (any random one will do) and a proxy to trick the server into thinking you are a US ip address (e.g. Hotspot Shield).
 
CDs for me. I rip out my CDs at a VBR that peaks at 320kbps. Big files, I know. But it captures the most out of the sound, and coupled with my headphones and Sony Walkman, it works ferpectly well for me :p

Digital downlaods tend to have DRM and capped at 128 or 192 max, FBR. Audio quality is lost through there so nahz. Until downloads start offering stuff that CDs can't give me, I won't usually download
 
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I dig NoiseTrade's business model - and it seems to be thriving.

Artists want to know, connect with, and be supported by music fans. Music fans want high-quality, free (or variably priced) music and to be rewarded, not punished, for sharing the music they love with their friends. We believe that if artists and fans work together, everyone can get what they want.

"A great record is its own best marketing tool," says Derek Webb, singer/songwriter and Co-Founder of NoiseTrade. "All the marketing dollars in the world can't accomplish what one great record can, especially if it's set free to roam around and connect with the right people." In 2006 Webb gave away his ‘Mockingbird' record for free online, asking in return for a little information (name, email address, and postal code), and as part of the process, for fans to invite their friends to download as well.

In three month's time Webb gave away over 80,000 full downloads of his record and collected valuable information for as many new fans. In addition, Derek has since seen many sold out shows and increased merchandise and record sales, including a curious spike in sales of the very record that was given for free.

It was the massive success of this experiment that inspired Webb, with the help of a few trusted friends, to start NoiseTrade. Now any artist can freely distribute their music online, via NoiseTrade's remarkable and embeddable widget, offering fans the choice to tell 5 friends or to pay any amount in exchange for an immediate download.

"Who needs peer-to-peer when you can have artist-to-fan?" Derek concludes, "If artists and fans realized how they could help each other and started making direct connections, without a middleman, the whole industry would change overnight. It would start a revolution."
Click to expand...
 
I guess majority still prefers CDs. For me, i still do. Having had a bad experience where i downloaded a song and realised that it's got the DRM thingy which some guys were talking bout before, leading to it not being able to play on certain mp3 players and/or multiple mp3 players.

I'll still be looking to add more CDs to my large collection. And i hope this trend can last for the next 2 decades, by when i'd already be too old to bother about my CDs anymore. 8)
 
yeah that was a good article, optisailor. There is a certain excitement every time I bought a CD, I would rip off the plastic on the way back home , read the liner notes and artwork, and then when I get back home the first thing I do is pop it into the player and listen. I miss that experience to be honest.

But still the cost difference is too high to justify getting a CD for me. I used to pay like around 25-30 dollars for a lot of music CDs that weren't so easily available, and sometimes even had problems trying to find them. Now I can get basically any album no matter how obscure at 1/2 that price.

And DRM sucks. I refuse to buy anything with DRM. It's a stupid use of technology which only serves to punish people who actually fork out the money to buy your products.
 
indianstallion said:
yeah that was a good article, optisailor. There is a certain excitement every time I bought a CD, I would rip off the plastic on the way back home , read the liner notes and artwork, and then when I get back home the first thing I do is pop it into the player and listen.
Click to expand...

that was what i used to do, until a certain bad experience where i was too excited and ripped the cover of a digipak. now i just try to control the urge until i reach home.

i think most CDs that are hard to find can actually be bought off amazon at very very low prices (if you buy in bulk). e.g. i got some CDs at around 15 SGD from amazon, compared to the price that would have been charged by a shop like say, HMV.

oh and DRM is another minus point for digital downloads. sometimes really not worth the money buying online. at least for me all the CDs i own currently are not copy controlled.
 
well, CDs can be copy controlled. I have a few Do As Infinity CDs that were supposed to be copy controlled, but the program I use to rip it out bypasses the CC so yea. Technically I'm breaking the law, but practically its fair play.

But I think at the end of the day, a lot of places will still use CDs. If i remember correctly radio still uses CDs as the medium
Think about this:

A CD has the potential to store up to 650 - 700MB worth of data, and the usual number of tracks a CD hold is about anywhere between 6 to 17 songs (based on my CD collection as of now) and nearly the whole data storage is used. One song in a CD is actually about 50 MB to 70 MB in size. Yes, its that huge.
Reason being that the data in the CD is uncompressed. A vocal track in a CD alone is a huge file, maybe about 5MB or so. Once you add in drums, violins, guitars, bass, keys, etc, a file can be freaking huge. Of course, the quality is all relatively uncompressed, so there is no compromise in the audio quality. You get the best quality instantly out of the box
What an MP3 does is to compress this 70MB worth of data into a tiny little 4MB file. There is some audio loss in quality wise, as all the data is compressed.
Audiophiles also prefer CD format as they can rip out the CD at the format they like it.

Until they can offer MP3s that can play exactly like CD quality its quite hard for CDs to die out IMO
 
theliverevolution said:
A vocal track in a CD alone is a huge file, maybe about 5MB or so. Once you add in drums, violins, guitars, bass, keys, etc, a file can be freaking huge.
Click to expand...

Hi. Just wanna highlight this. The file size is dependent on the duration and not the number of instrument tracks. When the instrument tracks are layered onto each other, they become 1 file.
 
mockingbird said:
I think this will not work out. Just like the *cough* Mini Disc *cough*

Does anyone still remember them?
Click to expand...

lol you have to check out the official website then. already have a few pretty famous artists/bands that are using SD to sell their music.

http://www.slotmusic.org/

i hate to see the time when CDs become ancient (which i hope wouldnt be too soon and doubt it will be, considering vinyls are still popular and being produced especially among collectors).
 
to James: Woops. I forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder

mockingbird: But Minidisc was something new at that time, hardly embraced at all. Micro-SD is now widely embraced by a lot of companies whether it is on MP3, mobile phones, etc (maybe except for Sony, yet again there's always an adaptor...)

this MAY actaully work, but is there any alternative to get a higher audio quality instead of jsut a standard 320kbps?
 
at least from what i have read on various websites, 320kbps is the industry standard for slotmusic, the company that produces these microSD albums.

but im thinking, assuming they charge consumers 20 bucks for a microSD (that can easily be accidentally deleted, with no physical album art and booklet) and the same price for a CD, i guess most likely they are gonna lose out. unless there are consumers who are really in urgent need of listening to a particular artist.
 
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